"Nor about maneuvers apparently?" She hesitated over the word as if it were unfamiliar.
At her charge the light of battle leaped to his eyes. "Then it was a maneuver? I suspected as much."
The audacity of her! The unparalleled audacity! "But I am not so much interested in maneuvers," he added merrily, "as I am in the strategy behind them."
She looked puzzled, though her manner was still mocking. "Is there always strategy," she pronounced the word with care, "behind them?"
"Always in the art of warfare."
"But can't there be a maneuver without warfare?" He could see that she was venturing beyond her depths; but he realized that a confession of ignorance was the last thing he must ever expect from her. Whatever the challenge she would meet it with her natural wit and her bright derision.
"Never," he rejoined emphatically. "A campaign goes either before or afterward."
A thoughtful frown knit her forehead. "Well, one didn't go before, did it?" she inquired with an innocent air. "So I suppose—"
He ended her sentence on a note of merriment. "Then I must be prepared for the one that will follow!"
She threw out her hand with a gesture of mock despair. "Oh, you may have been mistaken, you know!"